Molly Nilsson - Extreme - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

2017 . Since 2015's Zenith, Berlin-based songwriter Molly Nilsson has surrendered to the world, traveling from Mexico to Glasgow, observing the changing socio-political landscape and imagining a better world. For an artist who has so successfully created her own environment and gradually let others in, her eighth studio album Imaginations sees Nilsson directly engaging with her surroundings, engendering change and allowing love in. Imaginations dreams big, recasting storming, stadium-sized pop into the internal language of the solo auteur. Imaginations is not escapism, it's a kaleidoscope and an alternative view, an agent of change. On Imaginations Molly is recasting her interior monologue as a prism through which to see the world, a means to live differently and to reject the status quo. We can Think Pink, change our destiny together. This is an optimism about the future when we need it the most. InchNew boys, new girls... give me your smile and I'll give you mine.Inch Clearly, we are living through a transformation but with alchemists like Molly Nilsson, we're never alone in the process.

Un-American Activities is the 11th Studio album by Molly Nilsson. Written and recorded entirely on location in California at the former home of writer, poet and early opponent of the National Socialist regime in 1930s Germany, Lion Feuchtwanger and his wife Marta. An album of experimentation, genre-mashing and, above it all, Nilsson's instantly recognizable melodic skill and empathy, it continues the songwriter's explorations of power, freedom, oppression and it's opposing force, a love unbound.After accepting an artist residency as part of the Villa Aurora program, Nilsson began work crafting a new album from scratch in a new environment, afforded the freedom, space and time to challenge her practice and take her music into new territory. The resulting work, Un-American Activities, is a love note not only to the artist who was among the very first to be declared an Inchenemy of the stateInch by the Nazi regime but also to both the eternal struggle he fought and the human spirit that pervades all of Nilsson's best work. It is also a double-pointed poison pen letter a critique of the new forms of oppression wielded by her temporary adopted country of the USA but also an acknowledgement of the promise it always offers but never fulfills.Along with the novel use of color and photography in the artwork for Un-American Activities, there are swathes of new techniques, genres and timbres new to Molly Nilsson's music in evidence, 16 years into her music career. On InchJackboots ReturnInch is an icicle-cold New Beat track that deals directly with the current situation in Germany and the resurgent Nazi-affiliated AfD. The question the song asks is, what's the timeframe we're talking about? Is this the 30s, or somewhere a lot closer to home? The beat is picked up on InchThe Communist Party,Inch Nilsson's deepest bow to House music, evoking the early 90s Rave pioneers, Belgian 8

2018 . Twenty-Twenty is Molly Nilsson's eigth album; the latest opus of an artist in a constant state of development and strength. Twenty-Twenty is about emerging from the husk of your old self, about binning the chrysalis and daring to stand up both to power, and also to your own limits. In 2018, we see the climate changing, democracy crumbling, inequality and injustice erupting. 2020 examines the near future, seeking out clarity, reflection, renewal and opportunity. It contains anthems so tall as to induce vertigo, leaving the taste of Euro Dance in your mouth, albeit without a four on the floor beat. Here, the pop auteur is haunted by the late Prince, channeling Courtney Love and Lou Reed, anger and love. Recorded as ever in her own Lighthouse Studios and co-released with her imprint Dark Skies Association, the record is consistent in strategy and approach to past releases, yet on 2020 Nilsson pushes the limits of what can be said in the scope of a pop song even further. Despite working with used keyboard sounds that evoke memories of a distorted past, the sound is distinctly contemporary. The record drifts between playful punk methods and hi-fi ideas, strikingly clear through the fuzz of a surrounding world painted with reverb. Rather than gracefully dissecting, 2020 rips apart personal neuroses and insecurities, looking for the roots of issues and the equation that, when solved, will produce the future. 'I don't care if the world is through, every night is new,' 2020 erupts with fist-in-the-air empowerment, a realization that if we're all alone down here, we can still make it.